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There Will Always be Voices in this Place by Mary Wickham
The Academy of Mary Immaculate is a Roman Catholic girls’ secondary school situated on Nicholson Street, Fitzroy, Victoria, Australia. It was founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1857 and is the place of the first Mercy Convent in Melbourne (and on the east coast of Australia). On 20th April 2021, this Convent was entrusted into the care of the Academy of Mary Immaculate ‘for the furtherance of the Ministry of Education’. This date marked the 164th anniversary of the opening of the Academy - the first Catholic feepaying secondary school for girls in Melbourne - by Mother Ursula Frayne, leader of the first community of Sisters to settle in Melbourne and the first Sister of Mercy to set foot on the shores of Australia, in Perth, Western Australia in 1846. The following is a piece by Mary Wickham rsm, poet and past teacher, who had been commissioned to write a reflection for the occasion, and is entitled ‘There will always be Voices in this place’.
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There will always be voices in this place, voices of prayer and promise, sounds of laughter and longing, plain speaking truth and tales of need and beauty. There will always be voices in this place, Voices that belong to hearts learning mercy, Hearts that are at home here, one with its history and purpose. At first it was the fresh air of the farms of Fitzroy, in a settlement a mere twenty or so years established, Flinders Street Station a couple of years old, the great Cathedral and Exhibition Buildings not yet built, and these two rickety, leaning houses watched a city change: the Victorian edifices the gold rush ushered in, the ambiguous scrapers of the current sky, as successive peoples escaped from war and strife, the varied cultures and races seeking life, that made this city great.
All the while the Women lived here, spinners of kindness and culture, singers of hope and of spirit, an eclectic mix of the fit and the frail. The city spread, the needs beckoned, their responses diverse and innovative, while monarchs, mayors, bishops and baristas–the generations–flourished and fell, one to the next.
The women lived and grew old here, dispersed each morning just out the door or along the tramlines, at end of day gathered back in by the house for sustenance, and for the unique companionship of the affiliated. The women knew the seasons of the spirit and the phases of the body, they braved the loneliness and loveliness of their vocation that had brought them from as far as Ireland, and as close as the suburb adjoining.
Their span has known almost breakneck change, former customs now quaint and curious, new ways asserting and evolving, wars and wonders, diseases now unseen and diseases terribly new, Titanic the event and its movies, Charles the Dickens and the Darwin, Brahms to Beatles, Dame Nellie to Dame Edna, Phar Lap and Ned Kelly, Olympics and Westgate Bridge, the disasters and triumphs of the city within earshot, the great dome and the spires, the hospitals and theatres, chalk to computer, costumes medieval to modern, horse to steam to petrol, moon landing, climate changing: the teeming, tumultuous life of the city.
The noble elms that line the streets have seen the seasons through and grown old with the women. The newer choices have made their choice rare, their paradoxical success in enhancing life for women has narrowed the number in their own house. Instead of choirs there are small ensembles still singing, Spirit blowing where it wills.
There will always be voices in this place, and hearts will be learning mercy. Eras pass and songs come to an end. There is sadness, a deep grief of the world turning. They leave, the last of the line to call it home, and one history is finished. A wistful but grateful Amen we say. But the bones of the one who began it–they stay. The old walls weep and the spirits whisper their stories: it has been a fine time. There is peace and promise in the uncharted future: who can say where the Spirit will drift? Who will sing? Who will sing? You? Will you sing? Yes, I will sing We will sing. Eras begin, new history is ready for the making, and fresh songs will shift the air. Hope lilts and faith lifts, as new melodies of mercy are begun and sung, and sung and sung
*** Retrieved 30th June 2021 from https://www. mercyworld.org/f/45074/x/97381cfd16/ami_fd_ a6_cover.pdf
